A month before she died, Joan Lassiter asked her best friend Phyllis McGowan to marry her husband Jerome after she was gone. They had no children and he would need looking after, she told Phyllis. Promise me, she pleaded.

Now at the memorial reception at Phyllis’s house – Jerome said his house down the block still smells of sickness — Phyllis is putting away a plate of cheese and cold cuts when she senses more than hears Jerome’s voice in the living room go quiet. Most guests have already left or are busy gathering their things and she has begun cleaning up. She doesn’t know the remaining visitors but is familiar with Jerome’s unusually sonorous voice. It always carries.

Continue reading… "The Promise"